Rigorous Honesty, in the search of recovery from gross obesity. Mainly opinion, not advice. Some speculation, some errors, some fiction.
Sugar, grain and processed products are not food. Omega 6 oil and dairy should be mainly avoided.

Monday, March 23, 2015

Picture just because...If the blind lead the blind, both will fall in the ditch.

Some kind of biblical or old literature quote.

Warning: Political Incorrect Post, all Opinion.

This is a restatement of the facts as I understand them. Around the blogs on this list, there are a series of wrong concepts that if I was to believe them, it would drive me back into the food. Studies can be biased to make them appear to something just plain wrong. It is beliefs must be changed to gain psychological repair. Reason can change beliefs. If it does not withstand my history, it is questionable, for I may be a black swan. (to disprove the proposition that all swans are white, look for black swans). I have been on the weight yo-yo for sixty years now, and have collected a bit of knowledge about the problem. We are luck for the last 20 years to have so much unsorted knowledge at our finger tips, some wrong, but mixed in is a bit of right.

Hunger is the body demanding food. Cravings and other forms of the body and/or the mind demanding food are not so well understood or even experienced by some people. Some people just have hunger. Good for them. They do no know the problem of cravings. These are the driving force behind eating disorders, compulsive overeating aka emotional eating, food addiction, obesity, and all that other host of issues that drive overeating. Yes, obesity is a driving force of overeating. Circular feedback in the wrong direction.

Appetite is generated, and we can resist for a while, but eventually the desire wins, until it does not. If we remove the cause, the problem becomes overcoming a habit. That is where diet comes in. Exercise may also have a effect at this point where the desires can be displaced. Exercise uses energy and displaces hunger for a short time, as long as you have the impulse and motivation to exercise. Weight loss is simple in theory; just quit eating. It is the doing that is the problem because the physical, habitual, primal and unconscious brain functions take over and over ride the rational mind. Salivating in the grocery store is not normal.

First we must recognize that the problem has a cause. That cause is beyond our control, for the most part, it is genetic, and/or chemical, and/or induced chemical, or psychological, which we may be able to alter. We may be able to impact the psychological causes.

Sometimes the driving forces is chemical/biological and can be reduced by the elimination of specific foods, as by removing the fast digesting carbohydrates, sugar, ground grains, processed foods, and well cooked and ground calorie dense carbohydrates. Be aware that some of us may need some carbohydrates, at least to start with. That amount is not fixed, and may be dependent on our stored glycogen level. We can alter what we eat easier that how much we want. Some people, including the government disagree with this HFLC approach, but that is their problem. I cannot respect a government that does not follow reason. But there still remains more problems, in the soft psychological sciences and belief system philosophy areas of life.

It is pointless to having family, medical personnel, and the like chewing on the obese. Most do not understand the problems. It is also pointless to try to correct their illogical ideas. They are not listening. Each specific problem must be addressed with the specific solution required. But these problems are often nested, and may require a chain of solutions, and in specific order. Therein lies the problem, sorting and ordering the solution. Carbohydrate induced cravings do not respond to HFLC diets.

If the problem is boredom no diet will fix it. We may need to make changes to our life, get a life, if necessary. If the problem is anxiety, we need to understand the cause of the anxiety, remove it, or learn to deal with the anxiety. It it is stress, we can remove the stress, or learn other methods of dealing with it. It the problem is environmental, we can change our environment, change conditions within the environment, or learn to deal with it. It we eat in front of the TV, perhaps we need to go off line, or off cable, and get back to reality more.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

In reading positive psychology, Seligman, and Sonja Lyubomirsky on Happiness, I have become aware of a circular logic in all of this, philosophy, religion, and in eating disorders. It seem to be a variation of similar circular logic effects. How is this possible? and is it real or am I just seeing an illusion? It it me that sees the circular logic, or is it just there. The whole concept need some cleaning and polishing first, so this is a first draft of a nebulous construct.

The steps of this circular logic looks something like this:
Mission, purpose, objective, goal
Belief that it is right to do right (Note, belief, not logic)
Positive Emotion,
Interest
Motivation
Meaning
Engagement
Commitment
Persistence, Enthusiasm
Action
If fate permits, Achievement
Satisfaction
Mental joy
and all this feed back into the positive emotion.
Repeated cycling cause habit.

The emphasis is different on each step for each subject in which we cycle. Some subjects have little input from some steps, hence the steps are invisible for that subject.

To demonstrate this cycle lets first look at the Stoic living by virtue is necessary and sufficient for happiness and a flourishing life, along with Musonius " nature has set us a goal of flourishing" We plug the forgoing in as a mission, and believe that it is an appropriate to do this. We then progress down, feeling a positive emotion, motivation, meaning, engagement, action, achievement, mental joy and all that feeds back into the positive emotion of know we were right and thus close the virtue circuit of doing the right thing for the right reasons. This is circular logic at it's finest. Success and piece of mind is assured, once we believe our actions are virtuous. There in lies the problem, we are defining or accepting what is virtuous without testing it. That is creating a smell, like week old fish in my mind.

Religion state what is good and should be done, yet does not provide the backup logic. It is an instruction to follow a plan of some long dead person. Stoicism and Buddhism, at least, provide some logic to verify the correct direction, by stating what our purpose is at least. We are then free to accept, withhold judgement, or decline there fundamental beliefs, one piece at a time. How can we say that it not our nature to flourish in life? The opposite is to die off. we can languish about for a while, but we have a basic instinct at a cellular level to reproduce and survive, aka flourish.

Now the problem I have with religion is obvious, it is not logical, but a non reasoning diction to do something that is not logical, by we a fooled into thinking it is right, as it has been dictated as so by some long dead. It is the whole belief system that is corrupted. Not of just Jew, Christian, Muslim, or the like, but all that depend on beliefs as a foundation of life. It is living based on belief rather than reason is the real problem.

Religion depends on the people believing what is written is right, which, based on the action of the people of religion, especially ISIS, ISIL, is not right. And yet, if they believe it is right, they are right, and are leading a good life. Any reasoning person would need to question their actions. The problem is belief base circular logic, not logic.

So is the food problem the same, overcoming a belief based food plan, rather than following a logic based one? And our inability to develop a new habit to replace the bad ingrained and societal pressured bad habit formed in childhood and practiced in adulthood of high carbohydrate diets. How does one replace a resistant to change habit? Against the current of family?

The world has more people in areas that it can support. One solution is to eat carbohydrates and die off early, while providing employment through the medical industry. Or eat carbohydrate and die off from probable glyphosate induced cancers or metabolic syndrome? Anyone for the China one child policy.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

I am in the process of reading Sonja Lyubomirsky's book(s). I was led to them through Positive Psychology stuff, and that is all tied together. Emphasis is different, but the subject is he same, and the language is different.

It is as tied together as Stoicism and Buddhism, possibly through Darius the Great, as his gold coins (daric(s)) have been found in Asia, and Africa, and the Zoroastrian like concepts abound in both areas. More of the same subject and different emphasis, different language.

It all comes down to; if I do not care, it does not matter, thinking makes it so, some things are up to me and some are not, I can only change me, bad feelings are internally caused as are good, and a few other one line concepts fleshed out differently. Oh well. Life goes on until it does not.

All this has nothing to do with food or does it have everything to do with the desire to eat? Is the desire to eat driven be a mental issue that can be changed by thinking differently? Could it be that simple? There is not a way to recovery, recover is the way, whatever that means.

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

It is an ongoing problem that is not understood by many. It is often experienced, and seldom recognized. For those of us who have it, is a bitch of a problem. There is no available solution, only maintenance. If we take a surgical cure, we still may have a slightly different version of the same problem. What am I talking about, this cc or overeating? It could go either way.

Yoni's post http://www.weightymatters.ca/2015/03/why-you-should-aim-to-be-diligent-not.html kinda shows how much the medical community understands about the issue. Overeating is a ongoing problem. We go on a diet. We lose weight. The diet ends. We start gaining. The problem that caused overeating remains, unidentified, unaddressed. Somehow we found overeating gives us some kind of relief, we internalized that reaction or relief. High blood glucose and/or high insulin or a gut full of food is a relaxant. That is a partial solution to stress/anxiety/emotional upset, and becomes a maladaptive behavior.

Pathological desire to eat or for foods result in a food addiction or addiction like cravings. The only solution that I have found is complete abstinence from those foods. If anyone has other solutions, please advise. If the craving is present, overeating will occur. Will power has an short life against a physical drive. Not eating with cravings is trying to fight nature. How long can you tread water?

Still some medical asshole insists on moderation, and offers nothing for the cravings. He seems to be unaware of those cravings, which is likely the cause of most of the obesity we see today, not hunger. The hunger is due to processing and the speed that processed food can be digested and stored, leaving us hungry. For those also, the only solution is abstinence of processed fast digesting hyperpalitable foods. This is a addiction like issue. Replacement of fast digesting food with slow digesting food removes hunger as a driving force. See The Burn Rate Diet, Dr. S.R. Van Schoyck for more information. The Paleo does that. LCHF also. or 19th Century. Banting. Etc.

But what do I know? I have only been digging into this overeating problem in a serious way since 2008, and have been living deep cycle gain and loss since 1955, when I started school. Anxiety is a bitch. Expectations cannot be lived up to, when the success are not recognized, but the goal posts moved, or placed beyond reach once in a while. I cannot set goals, compete or have expectations of myself else the anxiety gets ugly.

Monday, March 2, 2015

Are there foods that act as pathological desire triggers? These would be like Kessler's hyper palitable foods, but that are not that great tasting, only with addiction like symptoms of causing the desire to eat more of them.

Pathological because eating them is not good for this human.

Desire, because I have been thus far unwilling to give them up.

The lowly potatoes. They are a economical food. I grow them, as my ancestors have for more than 500 years. It feels like an betrayal of my ancestors to give them up. But then some days, for days at a time, they do not call to me. Other days, oh my god. If there was a god, I might be offended with that. It shows how deep religion is buried into our language and speech. It is a pathological desire. They must go.